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Traditions of the Arikara

Chapter 105: FOOTNOTES:
By George A. Dorsey
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Archaeology & AnthropologyMythology, Legends & Folklore

About This Book

A collection of Arikara myths and oral narratives gathers creation accounts, emergence variants, and a long series of transformer legends that explain origins of people, animals, dances, and sacred objects. Stories recount land brought into being by animal and culture figures, people fashioned by spiders, visits of a corn spirit, escapes from buffalo, marriages between humans and celestial or animal beings, and the deeds of trickster figures alongside a recurrent culture-hero poor boy. Many tales also serve as etiologies for ceremonies, dances, medicine societies, and ritual powers, often linking human life with animal and cosmic forces.

51. THE COYOTE AND THE ARTICHOKE.[52]

The Coyote was going along through thick timber. He saw an Artichoke plant, which he dug up. He asked it its name. The Artichoke said, “Cososit,” meaning artichoke. The Coyote wanted to know if he had any other name. The Artichoke said, “Take-a-Bite.” When it said that, the Coyote took a bite. The Artichoke repeated this name four times, and every time it repeated it the Coyote took a bite of the Artichoke. Finally, the Coyote had eaten the Artichoke.

The Coyote went on, and again and again he expelled flatus, moving his feet each time. Every time he expelled flatus he seemed to grow worse. Once it threw him up in the air. Now, before expelling flatus, he got hold of a tree, and he said, “Now let me expel flatus.” The flatus threw him up in the air, tree and all. Again he went on, and he came to a stone, and when he knew he was to expel flatus, he said, “Now let me expel flatus.” This he did, and the stone went up with the Coyote. The stone fell on the Coyote and killed him. This is the reason we find coyotes lying beside stones.

FOOTNOTES:

[52] Told by Cut-Arm.